May 2013 – Building on Sapior’s market lead in enabling ethical data sharing, a new version of the SafeMerge cloud-based de-identification service has been released.

Suitable for projects of multiple parties that must both contribute data and collect it, SafeMerge is the breach risk free way to go. Sapior takes care of all the security heavy lifting and so makes participating in data sharing projects simple and secure. Getting consistent pseudonyms across all contributors of data is now trivial.

As long as you can remember a browser password then all other encryption details are taken care of for you (no salts, hashes, phone calls or emails with linkage passwords!).

Because this technology has been reviewed by the NHS’ Ethics and Confidentiality Committee [ECC 5-04(b)/2011] you can be assured that all the hard questions have been asked and answered. SafeMerge is the most secure means to share health data that meets or exceeds all current NHS guidelines.

Unlike the NHS’s central HSCIC facility, no patient data is ever visible in transit between sender and receiver. With Sapior you can rest assured breach risks are under control without worrying about the liability issues of using HSCIC’s ‘central database’ approach.

You must have an up to date Java installed on your PC (for the encryption processing) and any delimited data is acceptable. Pricing is per download of de-identified linkable data.

05 April 2011 – Robert Navarro outlined a worry free way to share health data for commissioning or risk stratification.

The concept of a Trusted Third Party has been extended to address the privacy and legal concerns with exporting patient identifiable data from a health provider’s system, whilst still allowing for that data to be linked with other provider’s data.

The goal is to allow clinicians and commissioners to safely unlock the potential within a patient’s treatment profile that is naturally fragmented across specialist health providers (to the highest standards of information governance and lowest breach risks possible).

30 March 2009 – De-identification specialist Sapior Ltd announces it has received a commendation from the Patient Information Advisory Group (PIAG) (now National Information Governance Board – NIGB).

Sapior is working with St. George’s University of London to develop a groundbreaking privacy-enhanced data collection process called SAPReL (Secure And Private Record Linkage).

St. George’s and Sapior made a joint application for support under section 251 to link routinely collected primary care data, data from the IAPT programme in the demonstration sites, and the secondary uses service. PIAG has approved this access to patient-identifiable data for the purpose of pseudonymising or de-identifying it for use in a cohort study.

In its provisional approval letter, the Advisory Group described the application to be “an exemplar”.

“Members noted the use of technology in the pseudonymisation process to be highly commendable and an example of best practice in order to achieve the pseudonymisation process.” (Source: PIAG Meeting Minutes, Monday 8th December 2008, pg. 10)

“Our flexible data harvesting solution removes identifiable information at the data source in a consistent way to allow the vital ability to link with other sources,” says Robert Navarro, Managing Director of Sapior Ltd. “This means researchers can develop a more comprehensive view of an individual’s record whilst still protecting the sensitive data during use.”